← The OCD Stories
The OCD Stories
Dr Michael Greenberg: OCD as a defense mechanism (#489)
01:09:06
In episode 489 I chat with Dr Michael Greenberg. Michael is a clinical psychologist who specialises in Rumination-Focused ERP (RF-ERP). We discuss an update on Michael, rumination-focused exposure and response prevention therapy (RF-ERP), OCD as...
Loading summary
Transcript155 lines
- [00:00]
A
You're listening to the OCD Stories podcast hosted by me, Stuart Ralph. The OCD Stories is a podcast dedicated to raising awareness and understanding around obsessive compulsive symptoms. I do this through interviewing inspired therapists, psychologists and people who have experienced OCD. Welcome to the OCD stories and welcome to episode 489 of the podcast. And in this one I got on Dr. Michael Greenberg. Michael is a clinical psychologist who specializes in rumination focused erp. And in this one we discuss an update on Michael. Rumination focused Exposure and response prevention therapy, OCD as a defense mechanism, A psychoanalytical view of ocd Digesting feelings, some different psychological defenses, attachment and early experiences. Clinical examples of his point, how we are all humans that bring human experiences to our relationships. A compassionate view on parenting and much more. If OCD is interfering with your life, NOCD can help. They are licensed therapists, specialise in exposure and response prevention therapy, the most proven therapy For OCD with NOCD, effective treatment that is 100% virtual is available for children and adults with OCD. And most members get started within seven days on average. No hassle, just real science backed help and support between sessions. Begin your journey@nocd.com or the link will be in the episode description. So thank you to Michael for coming on and sharing this more different topic than a lot of you may be used to and I hope you can take something from it and I hope it helps. And thank you to you guys as always for listening. I deeply appreciate it. And without further ado, here is Michael. Welcome back to the podcast, Michael.
- [01:49]
B
Thanks for having me.
- [01:50]
A
Yeah, it's good to have you on. Always a pleasure to see you. So it's been a while. Obviously you've wrote a new article which is why you're here to talk about that. But just anything else you want to share, update what you've been up to, your own private practice, anything you want to share?
- [02:08]
B
Yeah, thanks. I think. I think the article is basically a reflection of what I've been up to. I've been, like I said I was doing, I've been immersing myself in psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic theory. I think since the last time I was on the podcast, I've done two years of coursework at the Psychoanalytic Institute here and we now do some coursework within my practice. We do psychoanalytic coursework as a team. So I've learned a lot of theory and I've also been in analysis for six years and in psychoanalytic consultation. So that's what I've been up to. And this article is a synthesis of a lot of what I've learned over those years. And I tried to formulate it in a way that would be accessible to someone who doesn't know anything about psychoanalysis and potentially a CBT therapist who was open to some new ideas that they could incorporate without taking a deep dive into a whole other area.
- [03:14]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [03:15]
A
Awesome. And obviously your private practice is still very much. Although your team is thinking in this way, they're still using the tools of ERP or RF ERP specifically.
- [03:27]
B
We're using both. We do rumination focused ERP integrated with psychoanalytic treatment.
- [03:34]
C
Cool. Cool.
- [03:35]
A
And for what you obviously what you want to share. You know, you said you've been there in psychoanalysis for six years, which would be multiple times a week, correct? Yeah. Quite a commitment. And obviously on the podcast and through, you know, I'm a fairly open minded podcast, I think, and therapist, but just generally we say, you know, avoid psychoanalysis, it's not going to help. And the amount of people I've had in my podcast that were in analysis for 20 years, you know, and it didn't, didn't make a difference for them.
- [04:08]
B
Can I pause you for a second? I'm not suggesting that we replace ERP with psychoanalysis. I'm suggesting that we augment ERP with psychoanalysis 100%. I would still tell somebody with OCD to first go to ERP, but then I think we need to recognize that ERP is, is. While it is a tremendously helpful treatment to many people, it's also limited and there's no reason that we can't do more over and above what ERP can offer.
- [04:40]
A
Yeah, no, I agree. And that's why I think I was setting that question up to get that answer off you. Just to just a disclaimer for anyone listening that they don't sort of run off and think, you know, I'm going to go, you know, do analysis four or five times a week and that will solve it by itself without these tried and true methods of ERP or maybe icbt. Now with that growing evidence base or.
- [05:05]
B
Anything else, I think we should also just because there's a concept of analysis of splitting, which means seeing things in terms of idealized and devalued. And I think a lot of the language that we use to talk about different treatments is split. So when we talk about even the term evidence based on to describe ERP or to describe icbt, that's an accurate term to use. There is evidence that supports that these treatments are helpful. But using that term can still sort of give the idea that this is an all good treatment, that's a perfect treatment, or that we know completely works. And I think it's important to emphasize, as I think we probably did last episode also when I was here, that evidence based means there is evidence that this treatment is somewhat helpful to many people, not that it's all the way helpful to anyone and not that it is at all helpful to everyone. So if we have a lot of studies that say a bunch of people were helped by this to some degree, then it's evidence based. But that doesn't mean that it's going to be. That doesn't mean that it's a total treatment. And I think that's important to emphasize.
- [06:16]
A
Yeah, spot on. And that's why we need to stay open minded on how we integrate other therapies, other ideas, other thinking. And as you know, and I've always said before, a lot of my training was psychodynamic, the foundation of it. So I'm very open to it. And some of the hardest cases I've had, having that psychodynamic thinking in the background helps make sense of the case where nothing else could. And I'm still using ERP ACT for me or Principles of icbt, but I'm holding the whole case within this framework of a psychodynamic lens.
- [06:51]
B
Yeah, I think that's a perfect way to say it. Like it's a way of conceptualizing what is going on and how all of these different pieces fit together, regardless of how you choose to intervene.
- [07:04]
A
Yeah, yeah, good, good point. And you, you mentioned that in your article as well. So. Yeah, let's, you know, OCD as a defense. Um, you know, just give us a rundown of the article, what someone might find your, your key kind of view you're putting across.
- [07:22]
C
Okay.
- [07:23]
B
I didn't come in today prepared to give the synopsis of the article, so I'm going to do my best, but I don't have it prepared, so.
- [07:29]
C
Good.
- [07:32]
B
Basically, I start the article by talking about a psychoanalytic perspective on how we come to be able to handle certain feelings. And this isn't exactly one specific psychoanalytic theory. It's sort of a general psychoanalytic perspective on how this works. And the example I give an article to start with is that if you have an infant who is hungry, that that infant doesn't know that they're hungry, they just, they don't have a concept that they're hungry. They don't even have a concept yet that they are a they, that they're a self. We just have a direct experience, a direct physical experience of pain or distress in the body associated with hunger. And then if all goes well, we have a caregiver who comes along and says, you're hungry, or feeds the baby. And either of these responses, what it does is it first of all helps the baby to develop an understanding of what they are feeling. And in addition to that, it communicates that there's nothing wrong with what they're feeling. There's nothing. Unacceptable.
- [08:43]
C
Okay?
- [08:44]
B
So similarly. Well, let me add an. Over time, this develops the baby's concept, mentalization, thought about what they're feeling. Oh, I'm hungry. That's what this is. Which makes the feeling more tolerable. Just like if any of us were feeling hungry, we wouldn't be overwhelmed by that because we know what's going on. We have a concept to go with what we're experiencing. And it also develops the baby's understanding that this is an acceptable part of themselves. This is an acceptable part of their experience. And those two things together allow the baby to then integrate this experience into their sense of self. This is an experience that I have. That's part of my total experience. And then the same thing is what happens with any feeling. So if a baby is feeling, or as you get older, whatever the feeling is, fussy or jealous or angry or distressed or whatever it is, if you have a caregiver who understands what you're feeling and shares that understanding with you over time, that develops your capacity to understand what it is that you're feeling. And if the caregiver's response is also accepting of that feeling, then you relate to that experience as an acceptable part of yourself, and it gets integrated into the self.
- [10:08]
C
Okay?
- [10:08]
B
And this is how we learn to metabolize any of our feelings.
- [10:12]
C
Okay?
- [10:14]
B
So that's what happens when everything goes right. And then the question is, you know, what happens when things go wrong? So if we have a caregiver who doesn't understand what the feeling is or who responds to it in a way that makes us. That communicates that this feeling somehow threatens our relationship with them, our attachment to them. Let's say they get angry at us for feeling a certain way, or they withdraw or they get very anxious or distressed in reaction to a certain feeling. If they don't understand what we're feeling, we may not develop an understanding of this experience. It remains unformulated like we're experiencing it, but we don't have a concept to go with it. And. Or we may develop a sense that this is an unacceptable feeling that threatens our relationship to other people. So the metaphor that I like to use, which is sort of in line with one that beyond uses, is that it's sort of like digesting feelings is like digesting food. If you have the ability to digest a certain ingredient, you don't even notice that it's happening. You just digest it and move on. So, for example, if you do not have a food intolerance, then there are lots of ingredients and foods that we eat that we wouldn't even notice. Okay, but in contrast, if you can't digest a certain feeling. I'm sorry, yeah. If you can't digest a certain food or a certain ingredient, that then it gives you symptoms, and in some cases, your body has to get rid of it because you can't digest it. So I think this is a good metaphor for thinking about feelings that we can digest and feelings that we can't digest. When we've had this experience of mentalization, meaning help understanding what we're feeling and containment feeling, like that feeling is acceptable within relationships, that it doesn't threaten our connection to other people, then we develop the ability to metabolize or digest that feeling, and we don't even think about it. We just move on to the next thing. In contrast, if this is a feeling that we don't understand or that threatens our sense of being connected with other people, then we have to do something to get rid of that feeling or to disavow that feeling.
- [12:30]
C
Okay?
- [12:31]
B
Now, in contrast to foods that you can potentially actually get rid of, when it comes to feelings, you can't actually change how you feel about something. You can't change how. Or let me clarify, you can change your conscious experience. Like, you could look at a picture of a cute animal and be in a good mood, Right? Or you could talk yourself out of something and change how you're thinking about it, but you can't change how you fundamentally feel about something. So, for example, if you do something that makes me angry, and then I convince myself that really I shouldn't be angry, I might be changing my conscious experience of how I feel towards you. But fundamentally, I was angry with you. Fundamentally, maybe I still am angry with you for that thing.
- [13:12]
C
Okay?
- [13:14]
B
So basically, when it comes to food, potentially we could get rid of the offending ingredient. But when it comes to feelings, you can't actually get rid of a feeling. Because from a psychoanalytic perspective, how we feel about something Fundamentally just is what it is, and there's not really anything that you can do about it. That's just how you feel. It's just your natural reaction to whatever it is. So what we do in order to, uh. I'm, I'm doing error air quotes here, get rid of a certain feeling is we use defense mechanisms. And I say use, but it's unconscious. Meaning we just. It's happens automatically. We use defense mechanisms to push the feeling out of our conscious experience to make us unaware that we're feeling it either. That means disavowing it like we're experiencing it, but we don't recognize that we're feeling it. Or in other cases, defense mechanisms actually prevent us from feeling it. We're not actually feeling it in our conscious experience. Okay, so put another way, like the baby who's hungry, they understand what it is and they integrate it into the self. Okay. If the baby doesn't know what hunger is or has to disavow this experience, that's not me. Those would be two examples of how something can remain hungry, unconscious. It's either not experienced or it's not accepted as a part of the self. How am I doing? Because I didn't prepare for this.
- [14:43]
A
No, you didn't. Yeah, I was going to say if someone who quote unquote didn't prepare for this, you've done a good job of summarizing your.
- [14:50]
B
Okay, so let's see. So that is sort of intro to emotional conflict and intro to how a defense mechanism works. Okay, so in the article that we talked about, probably in the last episode, which I think was about Mallon, we talked about how a defense mechanism needs to simultaneously give expression to a feeling while also hiding it. Okay, so we said then that from an analytic perspective, a feeling is like a physical force in the sense that you can't just get rid of it. It has to go somewhere. And so what a defense mechanism does is it finds a way to express or discharge the feeling in some way, while at the same time hiding it or disguising it sufficiently to prevent it from causing a problem. So for example, if I think that my being angry is going to alienate you, then I might instead get angry at myself unconsciously. It's not something I choose to do. It just happens. And then that would give an expression to. The anger gets expressed, but it gets expressed in a way that doesn't threaten our relationship. I get angry at me instead of getting angry at you. And therefore you don't, you know, it doesn't alienate you.
- [16:06]
C
Okay.
- [16:06]
B
All right. So that's. Let's say, chapter one. So then the question is, how does OCD function as a defense mechanism? So, as I said in the article, my goal in writing this article or in this formulation is to present a. A simplified framework that's accessible to somebody who's not familiar with psychoanalytic theory. So I just want to sort of disclaim that it's a little oversimplified.
- [16:37]
C
Okay.
- [16:37]
B
At all stages. But with that being said, on a basic level, how does OCD work? OCD uses primarily two different defense mechanisms, as well as others, but two primary ones. One is displacement, which is when, instead of experiencing a feeling in its original context, it gets moved to another context that symbolically captures the feeling, but in a sort of metaphoric, disguised way that moves it far away from its original context. Okay, so, for example, let's say. And I'm using this for any. This is an example that I'm using because it's so common. It's not talking about any individual patient. This is just a sort of typical example. We could have somebody who is afraid that they've left the stove on, or rather, we could have somebody who feels angry at someone they love in their family, in this family that's threatening for some reason. And so rather than being conscious that they're angry at this point, person they love, they might instead become preoccupied that they've left the stove on and that that fire is gonna burn down the house and kill everyone.
- [17:55]
C
Okay.
- [17:56]
B
So that becomes a sort of metaphor for this destructive, angry force that threatens to the anger. Both. It becomes a metaphor both for the aggression towards the family that's felt and also for the fear that. Of what this aggression could do, that it could destroy the family.
- [18:18]
C
Okay.
- [18:21]
B
So. Okay, so that's already displacement. So this person is not conscious of being angry at the person they love. They don't. They have not formulated that to themselves. Instead, they become preoccupied with this obsession that they've left the stove on and they need to turn it off.
- [18:36]
C
Okay.
- [18:37]
B
And then the other part of ocd, the other. Maybe even the thing that characterizes OCD is a defense called undoing. And undoing is anytime you say or think or do anything to neutralize an unacceptable or threatening thought or feeling. Okay, so for example, if somebody says, God forbid, that's like an undoing.
- [19:01]
C
Okay, Touch.
- [19:02]
B
So say again, would Touch.
- [19:05]
A
Would be one when people say touch wood.
- [19:08]
B
Yeah. Yeah, that's a good example.
- [19:10]
A
Thanks.
- [19:10]
C
Okay. Mm.
- [19:15]
B
Okay. So I'm just trying to stay organized while I Run through. So what characterizes OCD is a combination of displacement. It gets moved onto this new symbolic context and then undoing, which is doing something to then undo it. So, for example, going and turning off the stove.
- [19:37]
C
Okay.
- [19:37]
B
Or checking to see that the stove is off over and over again. So this explains why, like I said before, there are lots of other factors that go into symptom formation. Like, all of this might make it sound a little oversimplified. Like, oh, there's one feeling, and then it gets displaced and undone. In fact, there can be more than one feeling. In fact, psychoanalysis would assume that a whole bunch of factors and a whole bunch of feelings are coalescing onto a symptom, that it's not one thing. And there are also other defense mechanisms that get involved in forming a symptom. Projection, reaction, form. I'm not going to go through them here. They're in the article. But it's not just one feeling and two defenses. This is just a sort of simplified framework for thinking about it. Okay, so this explains why. I mean, again, I'll let people read the article if they want more discussion. But one thing that this explains is why a compulsion never feels satisfactory because it was never about the stove to begin with. So no matter how many times you turn off the stove, you're never feeling satisfied because it was never about the stove. Does that make sense? Yeah. Again, I'll let people read the article if they want to explore this further. But that's the basic. So from an analytic perspective, what needs to happen in order to attenuate or diffuse the symptom is that we need to make the unconscious feeling conscious. Okay? So in other words, the reason that this person has a symptom is because they are either not formulating or disavowing this feeling. And if they could. If they could acknowledge the feeling and accept it as an acceptable experience within themselves, then they wouldn't have this symptom anymore. Okay, so I'll put in my usual disclaimer here that anybody with OCD listening is wondering, oh, is the hidden feeling that really I'm a pedophile, or is the hidden feeling that really I'm a murderer? And to be clear, that's definitely not what we're saying when we're talking about a hidden feeling, we're talking about a healthy, natural feeling that anybody would feel in reaction to a certain situation for the reasons we described. With a baby, that's. That isn't. Doesn't feel acceptable to them. They have some sense that that threatens Relationships, or they don't have the ability to formulate that that's what they're feeling. So far, so good.
- [22:16]
C
Yeah.
- [22:17]
A
And then I think we can take sort of Reed Wilson's quote of, the content of your worry is trash on a surface level where you're not giving cred. The thought that I might be a paedophile you were talking about. It's symbolic for something completely different.
- [22:31]
B
Exactly, exactly. So it's. It's. It's both saying. It's. It's agreeing and disagreeing with. With that notion. It's saying the content of your obsession is actually very important in that it helps us to understand what the underlying feeling is. But the content of your obsession is not your actual problem. In fact, the content of your obsession is a metaphor that is a distraction or something that keeps you far away from your actual emotional problem, which is something that you can't formulate by definition, because the whole idea is that it's unconscious, so you can't know what it is, because that's the whole point. So in other words, let's say somebody is, as an example, a sort of easy example, be somebody who's preoccupied with the idea that they want to murder their family. Right. Is this person a murderer? No. Is it possible, though, that this person just struggles with normal feelings of anger that anyone might feel sometimes towards someone they love, but that, for this person, feel unacceptable?
- [23:37]
C
Okay.
- [23:38]
B
And maybe that's because in their childhood they had a parent who had a negative reaction to their kid feeling angry with them, and so that feels very threatening to feel angry. And so they can't feel that. And instead it gets turned into this metaphor of I'm a murderer. Okay, Again, this is a little oversimplified, but that's the basic idea. So it's saying the content of your obsession is very meaningful as a metaphor, but it's not the thing itself. Does that make sense? Okay, so where are we up to? So, basically, the way psychoanalysis works in a nutshell is it seeks to provide the same process that didn't happen for the baby. So what the baby needed is somebody to say, I think what you're feeling is this. And it's perfectly okay to feel that. You can feel that with me. That's okay. That doesn't. I don't think that that. That doesn't threaten our relationship. Okay, so that, I think, in a nutshell, is what psychoanalysis is about. It's really about an experiential. Psychoanalysis is a really misleading name, at least in the way that it's practiced nowadays because it's. Psychoanalysis makes it sound like it's very intellectualized and really good. Psychoanalysis is supposed to be much more experiential. It's about accessing these feelings within the therapeutic relationship and having a corrective experience that you didn't get around a certain feeling when you were a child or a baby. Okay, so while that sounds like maybe it's simple, the reason you need all of the theory and methodology that comprises psychoanalysis is that as we're beginning to describe, our actual feelings are hidden underneath layers and layers and layers of defense. And so figuring out, or figuring out is not really the right word. Accessing those feelings takes a lot of training and understanding and methodology to be able to access the feeling that's buried underneath so many layers of defense. And so that's really what all of, in a nutshell, what psychoanalytic theory and methodology are about are a way of accessing the feeling that needs to be brought out and understood, formulated, mentalized, and acceptable within the relationship with the therapist in order for this to become something that doesn't have to be defended against, doesn't have to be displaced onto an obsession that makes sense.
- [26:20]
C
Right?
- [26:21]
B
So working analytically. There are different ways to work analytically. People should understand that psychoanalysis is not one school of thought, but it's a pretty broad tense. There are lots of different camps within psychoanalysis, lots of different ways that people practice psychoanalysis. But at core, no matter how you're practicing, what you're trying to do is to access the feeling that a person is having trouble accessing underneath all their layers of defense in order to provide this corrective experience and to make that feeling, to be able to bring that into consciousness and to integrate it into the self as an acceptable part of. Of a self, of. Of our experience. Okay, so basically, the way I conclude the articles by talking about what it means to integrate working analytically with exposure. And first of all, I think, hopefully, if people are listening to this, they understand that there's no real contradiction between these things. There's no reason that you can't do exposure and also either alongside it while you're doing it, after you're doing it, however you want to integrate these things. There's no reason that you can't do the skills and do the exposures at the same time as you're trying to discern what this is really about underneath it all. And that that only enriches the treatment. It doesn't take away. That in no way takes away from Any ERP that you want to do, but it does maybe change how you relate to erp. It does sort of change your attitude. Because if you see erp, if you think of, if you sort of don't see OCD as a manifestation of these underlying dynamics, then you could have a fantasy, which certainly I have partaken of in the past, that if only we get this treatment exactly right, the CBT treatment, we get the exposures exactly right, we get whatever else exactly right, that we could totally get rid of these symptoms.
- [28:40]
C
Okay.
- [28:41]
B
And we just need to do it better. But if you have an understanding that these symptoms are a manifestation of underlying emotional dynamics, then the idea that you would just sort of treat the symptoms in any sort of a behavioral way and that that would totally solve the problem is total. Makes no sense anymore because there are still these sort of underground forces that are driving these symptoms and then. And perpetuating these symptoms. So no matter how much you weed whack, unless you go for the roots and understand and address what's going on emotionally, you can't. You might change the symptoms in some way, you might suppress certain symptoms, but they're going to come out, these emotional dynamics are going to express themselves in some way anyway. So the way that I think about it now is, is that the way I work with ocd, the way we work with OCD in our practice is that we're working with the conscious and working with the unconscious. So we want to both work on a behavioral level, exposures, rumination, whatever it is. And we also want to work with the unconscious, meaning trying to access, understand what's going on here on an, on an emotional level. And yeah, I mean, I could go further into the implications in terms of omnipotency and in terms of agency and all of that stuff, but maybe. I'm not sure if you want me to or if we should let people read more if they, if they want to.
- [30:15]
A
Yeah, we'll. We'll cap it there and we'll. We'll unpack what you've. You've said and then we'll. The. Obviously you can go to your website, but I'll put the link in the show notes as well so people can just click it direct to it. Yeah. So I guess thank you for that. It's really, really good breakdown. And for those that don't like reading, this is the audiobook version.
- [30:39]
B
So if you don't like reading, I will say the article is not long. It's not a book.
- [30:42]
A
It's not.
- [30:44]
B
And it's Really, I tried very, very hard to make it very accessible. Even if you don't know anything about psychoanalysis.
- [30:54]
C
Yeah.
- [30:55]
A
I think you've done a good job job. And I think. Yeah, that's what I do appreciate about you. One of the things is that you. You're not pumping out stuff daily. You know, you're. You're spending maybe too long thinking about it, but you're. You're spending a decent amount of time formulating it before you put it out. Because people will come to me and say, when you get Michael next on. And it's like, I've asked him several times, but it's on his terms. You know, he has to want to come on. And he only does that when he's got something new. Which. Which is a good thing. Right. Because it's. When you are here to talk about it, whether it's right or wrong, you've put a ton of thought into it.
- [31:34]
C
Yeah.
- [31:35]
A
It's not like you've just whipped out this idea of OCD as a defense.
- [31:39]
C
Right.
- [31:39]
B
Also, I think, as probably is understood from everything I've shared, I'm synthesizing ideas, but I'm not making them up. This isn't like Greenberg thinks that OCD is a defense mechanism. There is, you know, a very rich literature that I'm drawing on.
- [31:58]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
- [32:00]
A
So one. One question that I think is in my head is, what are we saying here about the beginning? Are we saying that everyone has OCD is because when they were babies, their needs weren't met, or their emotional needs weren't met, or at least aspects of their emotional needs weren't met, or we saying at some point in their developmental journey, something like that happened, or.
- [32:24]
B
That's a great question. Yeah. So first of all, I'll say psychoanalysis leaves room for temperament, Meaning psychoanalysis would acknowledge that different people are born with different temperaments and different predispositions. And so there it's not. You could have the same person with different people with the same circumstances, and one person might develop OCD and one person might not. The point is personality and. And genetics play a role even within psychoanalysis.
- [32:57]
C
Okay.
- [33:00]
B
I think the way. The way that I would. I'll say a couple of things. Number one is I would think about it the same way as you think about anybody's personality. When it comes to personality, we take for granted that, of course, your personality was in, to a significant degree, shaped by your life experiences. And as any parent will tell you, kids have an inborn temperament. Right. Babies are different. They have a personality from the beginning. So you have your personality from the beginning, and then obviously you are also shaped by everything that happens to you. And obviously who you are is an interaction of all of those things over a long period of time. So psychoanalysis thinks about psychopathology, meaning symptoms, including OCD symptoms, as. As inextricable from a person's personality. Like, this isn't just like, I'm me, and then I also have this OCD symptom. This OCD symptom is a manifestation of emotional dynamics that are part of who I am more broadly. So that's one thing I wanted to say. And then in terms of, you know, so are we tracing this to baby? Are we chasing this to child? I think that the psychoanalytic perspective is that which also is intuitive, is that everything that happens lands on what happened before. Okay? So let's say you have a parent who. I'll give an extreme example because it's an easy one. Let's say you have a narcissistic parent, okay? And I know these days everybody's a narcissist, but let's say you have an actually narcissistic parent and say to have any angry, critical, or ambivalent feeling towards that parent would have elicited, like, a really aggressive reaction from that parent. Okay? A really. A really bad reaction from that parent. So that is the experience that this child has in childhood. Right? But presumably that's also the experience that this child had when they were a baby. Right. If this is a parent who doesn't respond well to anger, then this was also a parent who didn't respond well to an infant's version of anger. That makes sense. Or if this is a parent who falls apart when the kid. A different case. I'm making up a case, not a real case. If this is a parent who falls apart when a child is distressed, and therefore a child learns to defend against their distress, to disavow that they're distressed, okay? Then presumably when they were an infant, the same dynamics were present. Right. When the baby was distressed, how did the parent react? So they're having these experiences that land on top of that are the same dynamics that were present all the way back.
- [35:56]
C
Okay?
- [35:57]
B
And then over. And that's within one relationship. But then there's also this idea of repetition compulsion, which is that then a person brings their experience with that parent out into the world, and it informs how they interact with other people in a million different ways. You know, whether they feel comfortable with people who are like their parent. Whether they act in a way that elicits similar reactions from others, et cetera. So then they reenact this experience with other people as well. But all of this is building on everything that came before. Okay, so while we can talk about something that happened, let's say when they were 8, that was traumatic, the assumption would be that even though that thing was traumatic, the dynamics that were captured within that trauma were probably something that was also present before that, all the way back. So it keeps building and building and building on itself.
- [36:53]
C
Yeah.
- [36:54]
B
Does that. It does, yeah.
- [36:56]
A
I got a couple of questions because obviously I'm a solely a child and adolescent psychotherapist. So I work with a lot of parents and families and, and obviously almost always the parents want the best for their kid and blah, blah, blah. And, and, and sometimes you can see dynamics. They're pretty obvious where pet. Said parent loves their kid. But you can tell maybe they're a bit critical and they don't realize how this might come across to their kid. Or. But, but quite often I might find parents that I can. I really struggle to find a flaw or anything that's. That's problematic or they seem to be very emotionally attuned.
- [37:39]
B
And I jump in here for a second.
- [37:40]
A
Yeah, of course.
- [37:41]
B
So something that is sort of a principle in psychoanalysis, but once you say it, it's sort of obvious, is that nobody's perfect.
- [37:51]
C
Yeah.
- [37:52]
B
Like people have. People are. There's no perfect parent. There's no perfect family. There's no perfect relationship because people are really complicated and people have issues, you know, and so taking myself as an example, like, I have a. I have my own issues and neuroses and complexes and like things I react in certain ways to. Right. That doesn't make me a villain. That makes me a human being. And so it sort of goes without saying that, please God, when I have a baby, I'm going to interact with that baby based on my personality. I'm going to be doing the very best that I can at all times. And I'm still going to have my personality interacting with that baby. And that baby's experience is going to be shaped by my personality. So the, so that's just sort of part of, part of the human experience is that we're all limited and we all have conflicts and we all have. We were all raised by people who weren't perfect, who were in relationships with other people who weren't perfect and we were in families that weren't perfect. And so we're not saying that people are villains we're not saying that if you have ocd, your parent was terrible. We're saying, let's say, if you, let's say you're. You have a parent who is really distressed by witnessing distress. And their sort of automatic reaction to witnessing distress is to try to resolve it. Okay, let's say, is that a bad parent? No, that's a very loving parent. But maybe that child gets some sense unconsciously, meaning it just sort of, they feel it, that their distress is distressing to the parent.
- [39:48]
C
Right.
- [39:50]
B
And you get the idea. Or let's say when. What's a good example? You could give any number of examples. And also something I mentioned in the Mallon article is that it goes all the way back. The parent who has trouble acknowledging a certain feeling in their child is a parent who has trouble acknowledging that feeling within themselves. That's why they have trouble acknowledging within their child. And the reason they have trouble acknowledging within themselves is because their parent had trouble acknowledging it in them. So there's no villain in this story. There's just humans who are limited, who have our reactions to things that we have and it affects our kids. And that doesn't make us a bad parent. That makes us a human raising a human. And sometimes those conflicts will manifest as ocd. I think that that is partially temperament. I think it's partially the result of certain dynamics in the parent. A certain constellation of issues tends to produce ocd. And I think that's why we see. And when we, if you, you know, one of the, I'm sure you see this too. One of the advantages of being a specialist is that when you work with the same type of cases over and over and over again, you see patterns that you couldn't see otherwise. Now we see, I'm sure you see patterns of the types of parents that tend to go along with certain types of OCD cases and types of families. And that, for example, like. Okay, I don't want to give example again, I'm nervous to give case examples because I don't want to get too into anything that could sound identifying. But yeah, does that answer the question? So we're not saying, oh, if you're you ocd, you had a bad mother. No, we're saying like this is just sort of the state of affairs for being a person.
- [41:44]
A
Oh, 100%. And then there's that genetic potential predisposition.
- [41:50]
B
Yeah, I would say. I actually think that. I think at this point in time, in sort of where the field is, I think there's an overemphasis of the genetic predisposition. Like, I'll give you an example. Let's say you know, people who have ocd. This is another topic that I cover this in a footnote in the article, but I think it's a really important topic which we alluded to earlier, is splitting. Splitting is a term that can be used in a number of different ways. But let's say for our purposes just here, the simplest type of splitting is all good and all bad, okay? So if you have a parent who tends to view people as either good people or bad people, rather than everybody's complicated. And no matter how much you love someone, they're also annoying. And no matter how much you hate someone, they're also a human. Right? So if you have a parent who tends to see things in more black and white split terms, and I say more because it is dimensional, you can be more or less split. So if you grow up in that family where you might feel like behaving a certain way, maybe if you were to. And let's say you see your parent interact with other, view other people as bad for some reason, then you might be more inclined to be afraid that if you act in a certain way, that your parent will see you as bad as opposed to seeing you as complex. You know, a person who you know is good but also has all of these messinesses about them. Does that make sense? And certainly, for example, if you grow up in a family where you have parents who tend to split and you have a sibling who's the bad one, you know, or you're the sibling who's the bad one. These are very common dynamics in families of people with ocd. Or there's a parent who's the bad one. Right. That makes. That puts more of a pressure on you to not be, quote, bad in whatever way that other person is. And then you become a person who feels this pressure. I'll give you a great example. I was my. My grandmother. She should rest in peace. And I love her very much. She had a very particular way of doing things in the kitchen.
- [44:02]
C
Okay.
- [44:03]
B
And I definitely absorbed that pressure to do things a certain way in the kitchen.
- [44:10]
C
Okay.
- [44:12]
B
And my husband has now absorbed that anxiety about doing things a certain way in the kitchen from me. He did not grow up that way. Right. He doesn't want me around when he's doing stuff in the kitchen. And I think that that's just such an easy example of how these dynamics can be passed on in a way that has nothing to do with genetics. I think that's just an easy, intuitive example. I feel like things have to be a certain way. I feel anxious when they're not that way. When I'm around him doing things a certain way, I feel like they have. Like they should be done a certain way. He absorbs that pressure. Right. However that comes across, my anxiety, my criticism, whatever it is, and then he feels that way. And so we. That's sort of. He came into that as an adult. Right. But imagine if I was raised in a family where I felt a pressure to be a certain way in lots of different ways, and then I passed that pressure on to my kids because I felt like they had to be a certain way, and then they felt like they had to be a certain way. So you can sort of. I think that's maybe a good example. It's not too much to wrap your head around. It's pretty straightforward.
- [45:29]
A
No. And taking that example, your nan, obviously, you know, just because she had these anxiety in the kitchen, she's probably in there cooking out of love and care.
- [45:40]
B
I love her more than anything. I mean, she was amazing. And also, it's a sample of, like, I didn't do that on purpose. I didn't want to be annoying in the kitchen. It was just sort of like, that's part of me from how I grew up. Now I'm more aware of it. I try to be less annoying, but, like, that's just. So if I did that to my kids, it wouldn't because I'm a bad parent. It would be because I'm a person who was raised by people. But that doesn't mean that it didn't affect me, you know, So I think there's this tendency to want to split and say, like, well, if it was just human, then it shouldn't have a bad effect, but it can. I did make him anxious in the kitchen, at least when I'm around.
- [46:18]
C
Yeah.
- [46:19]
A
Yeah. 100 and yeah. Taking, you know, taking a parent who's really loving, attuned, all of that, you know, I. I've definitely seen it where they. Sometimes where they're too loving. They lack boundaries, and that's uncontaining for a kid.
- [46:36]
B
That's a great. Yes. I think that's another theme. And it's another sort of cluster of parents that we see.
- [46:43]
C
Yeah.
- [46:43]
B
I mean, I'll add this again. I want to be very clear. Every case is different. We can't make assumptions. Like, we're not saying that you have this symptom. This is your background, but there is definitely a big pattern. It is very, very common. Again, not everyone. It is very common when people present with pedophilia OCD to discover that there was a parent who had kind of poor sexual boundaries. Not in the sense that they did anything hard and fast, but maybe they walked around in states of undress or did other things that made this person feel uncomfortable, but in a way that wasn't acknowledged and that isn't conscious to the patient. And this has come up multiple times. And I run a training for other therapists that's in rumination focused crp, but integrates psychoanalytic perspectives. And more than once, someone has taken this idea and then queried with their patient who has pedophilia OCD and discovered that this person never told them these things because they're not conscious to them. They just took them for granted. Like, yeah, that's just how things were. They never thought about the fact that that was weird. But when you ask the right questions, then you discover that there was this stuff in the background. So I could go into more theory about how that experience then translates into pedophilia ocd, but maybe that's beyond the scope of today. But the point is, yeah, poor, poor boundaries can also be something. Or people with contamination OCD often had some sense of being intruded on in some way by their parents. Again, every case is different. We're not saying it's one thing, but that's definitely a theme. A theme in pedophilia ocd, A theme in contamination ocd. Totally.
- [48:33]
A
Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. And, yeah, like, you're saying that it's all. If it's set up.
- [48:40]
C
Yeah.
- [48:40]
A
Because nudity was fairly, fairly acceptable in my house. We were, I guess we were taught not to be ashamed of the human body, but I guess it's how. How it's all set up. For me, that was just normal, but it was expressed in, like, a normal way. So I never got. I never had Peter Peterborough themed ocd.
- [48:58]
B
I don't mean to make. I want to be very clear. I'm not saying anything one to one. I don't want anybody to walk.
- [49:01]
A
I'm just giving that as an alternative. Like, I, I just. Because in my head, I imagine everyone. It's like, oh, man. Yeah. My. My mom and dad walked to the bathroom naked most nights.
- [49:10]
B
And, you know, we're talking about parents who were sexually provocative.
- [49:13]
C
Okay.
- [49:14]
B
Actually provocative in a way that was not acknowledged.
- [49:17]
C
Okay. Yeah.
- [49:17]
B
In a way that. That stimulated a certain uncomfortable feeling in the kid, but that never acknowledged. And it left the kid with this feeling that they had done something wrong, even though they. They were not the.
- [49:30]
C
Yeah.
- [49:31]
B
The person who did something wrong.
- [49:32]
C
Yeah.
- [49:32]
B
Again, not saying anything too linear, but another example, you know, speaking of parents who are too loving, like, another thing that we notice in a lot of people with OCD is really enmeshed relationships with one parent, especially if there aren't two parents in the picture. Or if there are two parents in the picture, maybe there's a divorce, maybe there's a. An emotional disconnection between the parents such that the primary relationship is with one parent and not two. Right. That's common in the history of a lot of people with pure O. Certainly a lot of people with relationship ocd. And again, it's sort of beyond the scope to go into Oedipal dynamics, but that's a person who never had an opportunity to experience a healthy amount of ambivalence, a healthy amount of being left out that would naturally happen if there were two parents who had a good relationship with each other. Okay, I think we're go. I think maybe I'm going in too many different directions here. But I do want to say sort of when you. What psychoanalysis does. Because I've sort of maybe oversimplified it, what psychoanalysis does is it gives you a way of connecting the dots of what's going on here. So I think when I was talking to your colleague Johnny online about this, and I was saying it's sort of like if you. I don't. I never studied political science, okay? So when. If I'm listening to anybody analyzing the news of this happened, then this happens and they're connecting these dots, Okay. I would never have a way of connecting those dots because I don't know how these things work. I would never understand that there's a connection between this economic thing and this political thing and this war thing. I would never be able to understand that. But once you have a conceptual framework, a theoretical framework for understanding how these things interact with each other, all of a sudden you look at all these dots, and instead of just seeing dots, you see all the connections among the dots, and you see how one thing influences another and why this happened, et cetera. Psychoanalysis gives you a theoretical framework for understanding how all of the dots in this case are connected. So you had the experience, you got the email from the parents, and you had a certain dynamic there. Then you interacted with the kid, and there was a certain dynamic there. Then you look at the symptoms, and there's information there. Then you look at what they told you. About that, their family. And you see some dots there, okay. And then you. And you're able to connect all of these dots. Oh, this is. This is how all of these things are connected. If you don't have that theoretical framework, then to you, these things are not connected. Does that make sense? I'll give you another example. A couple of years ago already, this was a colleague of mine who works in a hospital and is a very smart, talented clinician with a lot of psychodynamic training. And the reason I say she worked in a hospital is because when you're in a hospital, you don't necessarily get to choose what cases you're seeing. So she got an OCD case, and she sort of had absorbed the idea that OCD is different. Like, when it's ocd, we turn off all of. We put on blinders, we turn off all of our psychodynamic thinking, and we just do exposure. Okay? So she was asking me about this case because she's not an OCD specialist, and she wanted to talk through it. And basically, in short, you know, without anything identifying, the symptoms were basically one parent, the father was contaminated. Anything that had to do with the father was contaminated. And she was like, okay, so, like, where do I start? What do I do as exposure? What, Whatever, whatever. And she wasn't even asking, what do I do as exposure? She was just asking, like, where do I start in thinking about this case? So I know this person. So I said, well, how would you think about this case if you were just. If you gave yourself permission to think right? And, like, as you normally would. And immediately she had this very rich formulation based on everything she knew about the case, about the family, about their interactions with her, their interactions with the kid, the family history, et cetera, et ceter. That made perfect sense of this symptom that clearly. Like, how could you look at a symptom where one parent is contaminated and not think that that says anything about the child's feelings towards that parent on some level? Right. But she was able to turn that off initially because that's what a lot of people encourage us to do when we're dealing with ocd. Even though once you give yourself permission to see how everything's connected, and especially if you have this person had a theoretical framework for thinking about how these things are connected, that's totally, like, ridiculous. Of course these things are connected, you know, so anyway, where was I going? So I think that's sort of what the thing that's most. If I'm thinking about what psychoanalysis does. It first of all helps us to look at the little bits of information that we have and understand what's going on here, have a way of connecting the dots and understanding what the problem is. And then it also gives us a way of intervening now that we understand that what's going on here is this, here is how we would begin to intervene within that framework in order to alleviate these symptoms. Does that make sense?
- [55:19]
A
It does, yeah.
- [55:20]
C
Yeah.
- [55:21]
B
I think that people who don't have a psychoanalytic perspective, they don't know that the dots are connected. So they don't know that they're missing anything. They don't. Especially if they're absorbing the sort of. What's the term? The. The accepted wisdom is that the term maybe accepted whatever the accepted idea that OCD symptoms are meaningless and you are. And that you are not supposed to try to understand them, and they have nothing to do with what happened to this person as a child, and they have nothing to do with their relational dynamics or their relationship with you or their relationship with their parents. Nothing. Then the fact. You wouldn't even think anything of the fact that you're missing all of this, you know, not only would you not realize you're missing it, you would think you're not supposed to see it. And once you have a theoretical framework for seeing how all these dots are connected, then it's obvious once you see it. The way one of my colleagues said it recently was once you see it, you can't unsee it. And I think that that's sort of one of the issues. Something that's an issue in getting psychoanalysis into the world of OCD is that people who treat OCD are all about, like, empirical data. Empirical data or evidence based, you know, show us the research. And people who use psychoanalysis, first of all, there's just a different culture. Like, psychoanalysis is less subject to a quick research study because it's so individual and it takes longer. So it's not. You can't do like 12 sessions of psychoanalysis and see what's going on. So I think there's a difference in culture there. But I also think that people who practice psychoanalysis, like, don't need you to prove that these concepts are real because they, they are staring at them every day. And they're patients. Like, I don't, I don't. Like, once you learn this theory and then look at it in front of you every day with your patients, then you sort of. It's like you don't need anybody to prove that it's true. And I can understand somebody from the outside saying, well, how do you know? But that it's such a foreign concept to somebody who has this training and practices this way. Because, like, what do you mean, how do I know? Like, I know that I don't know. Whatever, whatever. The same way as you connect the dots, you know, among things that happen in your life or I know that this person did this. I know that this person hit this person because they were upset. Right. I know they were upset because of this thing that that person did. And I know it had meaning to them because, etc. Etc. So that's how somebody psychoanalytic is looking at their cases. And I think that that's part of the breakdown in this issue around evidence.
- [58:23]
A
I agree. I agree. I think, yeah, the researchers listening are like, anyone with a scientific background is screaming, thinking, no, no, it needs. You can't. N equals 1. You can't just have one. You know, you need. But I think, yeah, for me, the biggest missing thing for psychology, which we used to have, is case studies. And I, I think it's. It's a huge shame there's not tons and tons of case studies out there. There are still empirically. There's ways of doing it. Case studies. Now, was it h. Scared? Theory building, Case study? There's another.
- [58:57]
B
Can I just add. Can I just add all of that is within the sort of culture of empirical research. There is tons of psychoanalytic research going on. There are journals and journals of psychoanalysis, but they're not doing empirical. That's not what it means to do psychoanalytic research. So when CBT is saying like, well, show us the data, they're saying like, it's like as if you're talking to somebody in a totally different culture who does things totally differently. But you're only willing to have a conversation with them if they talk on your terms, in your language, within your culture. And the CBT randomized clinical trial, like camp. And while there is some empirical research on psychoanalysis, it's not the majority of the field. There is a huge field of psychoanalysis that's very active and very busy and lots of publications, et cetera, et cetera. But it's a totally different world. And if CBC wants to learn from psychoanalysis or what it has to offer, they can't just cross their arms and say, like, well, you need to do it on my terms, otherwise I don't want to hear from you. Because, by the way, psychoanalysis doesn't care. Psychoanalysis doesn't care if CBT is listening to them because they're doing their own thing and they're, you know, excited and passionate about what they're doing. And they're not trying to convince anyone the same way as CBT is not trying to convince psychoanalysts to do cbt. They're just doing their own thing. Psychoanalysis feels the same way about you.
- [60:32]
C
Yeah.
- [60:33]
B
By the way, the devaluation is equal on both sides too. The same way a cbt, therapists devalue psychoanalysis without having really any idea what they're doing. Psychoanalysts, unfortunately, I wish they were above it because of their training. They do the exact same thing to cbt. They devalue it without really having any understanding of what we're doing. Anyway, I went on a tangent and I agree.
- [60:55]
A
I wholeheartedly agree. I think it's a real shame that all schools of therapy aren't communicating more and being open minded about how they can integrate or learn from each other. Yeah, it's a real shame, which is why I'm proud to call myself an integrative therapist. That's how I frame myself, because I don't want to be attached to any one dogma. Yeah, I'll say.
- [61:21]
B
Well, can I add one thing?
- [61:22]
A
Of course you can.
- [61:23]
B
If somebody is sitting, is listening to this, a therapist, and they're saying, you know, I don't know if I agree with this.
- [61:29]
C
Okay.
- [61:30]
B
What I would say to them is, you don't need to decide if you agree with this. You don't need to decide that. What I would do is I would love for you to read the article without deciding whether you agree with it. Just read it, have those ideas in mind and just see if naturally when you're listening to your patients, you start to see connections that maybe you didn't realize were there. And if you do start to see that maybe some of this is showing up in your cases, then maybe you'll be curious to learn more. But I don't think you have to first decide if you agree or don't agree. I think you could just read it. Interesting idea. And then see if you, if you start to notice connections that you didn't notice before.
- [62:10]
A
Yeah, yeah, 100%. And I think that's why I really like, you know, a simple version of it is thinking about the here and now relationship. Like Irving Yolom talks about it all the time, what's coming between the client and the therapist. Or it's why I really like functional analytics, psychotherapy or FAP for short. Because that's given a very simple, systematic approach to working or using what's coming up in the relationship as a way of helping interpersonal issues in the client's life. And I think those are good starting points.
- [62:44]
B
Yeah. And that's one. One.
- [62:46]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [62:49]
B
One piece of a psychoanalytic approach.
- [62:53]
A
100%.
- [62:54]
B
Yeah, yeah, I do. I, I, I don't want people to think that. I think sometimes people think that psychodynamic is like just making stuff up, making up an interpretation, you know, writing a lit paper. Here's what I think is, you know, what if it means this? So I want to emphasize that you need training to do psychodynamic therapy. Like, for example, I've had years of training at this point. So it's not just somebody sort of shooting from the hip making something up. It's rooted in theory and training and lots and lots and lots of psychoanalytic, decades of psychoanalytic research that are then informing how a person understands what they're looking at. It's not just somebody coming up with a pithy, you know, metaphorical explanation.
- [63:45]
A
Yeah, yeah, 100. And look, it's worth noting as you know, that there are therapists in both camps that are egotistical and stubborn and wrong and bad camps.
- [63:59]
B
You know, somebody posted, somebody, there was a post in on a group for OCD therapists about psychodynamic therapy and somebody posted a real horror story about themselves in a psychodynamic therapy. It was really like heartbreaking and it's a really awful story. And I could also tell you horror stories about people who have been in erp meaning like anything else. There are people doing a good job and there are people not doing a good job and there are. Everybody practices in a different way. And so one good or bad experience doesn't speak to a whole approach.
- [64:38]
A
No, no, but it's that it's like when a plane falls out of the sky. We, we take note. Right, because it's scary and the same as. But yeah, you get terrible plumbers, and you get really good plumbers and you get average plumbers and you have CBC.
- [64:53]
B
Therapists who are really specialized in ocd. And you have a CBC therapist who doesn't know what OCD is. And you can have a psychodynamic therapist who has a lot of experience with ocd. You can have a psychodynamic therapist who does not.
- [65:05]
A
That's a really good point.
- [65:06]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [65:08]
A
And there's also, I always forget the acronym. Is it istdp, the short term psychodynamic psychotherapy that they're doing more research on that now, I believe. But yeah. Anyway, look, one last question for you is, you know, in the article you talk about. You mentioned at the start of this conversation about digesting feelings. You know, as babies, you've got to learn how to digest feelings. And you kind of said throughout this that actually having. Being in analysis can give you a restorative, reparative relationship to help, I guess, teach you that. Is that one of the key answers that that's happening in good therapy, whether it's analysis or an ERP therapist that is thinking more relationally and dynamically, that that is one of the goals is to help them digest the feelings through that relationship.
- [65:57]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [65:59]
B
But again, first, you have to be able to access, you know, what that feeling is.
- [66:03]
C
Yeah, okay. Yeah.
- [66:05]
B
But, yes, I think that's probably a common denominator of. What's it called? What did Schedler call it? Hey, common factors or something like common factors in good therapy, whatever modality you're practicing.
- [66:18]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. True.
- [66:22]
A
All right. Awesome. Is there anything else you wish you could have said or shared today?
- [66:28]
B
As always, I'll say my best version of everything I said is in the article, so I would encourage people to check it out. Not because it does anything for me. If you read the article, it's not monetized in any way, but just because I want people to get the clearest version. And I worked really hard on making that as clear and accessible as possible. So if you have any questions or clarification or things that felt confusing about what I said today, I would encourage you to start there.
- [66:56]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [66:57]
A
I'll put the link in the show notes. And I think I just want to highlight one last thing. Is kind of when we were talking about parents is. Is we're all human. None of us are perfect. We all bring our own stuff to the table. I do. As a parent, I made a mistake tonight that I had to explain and, you know, show a model that I was wrong. And, you know, we do our best.
- [67:20]
B
And not only model they were wrong, but you also. You also provided immense. Like, you made the experience conscious. In other words, rather than just they had that experience and nobody helped them to formulate what happened or what they were feeling. You helped them to formulate this happened, and you may have felt that way and like that. So they could process what happened.
- [67:44]
A
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, hopefully. Exactly. And, yeah, I just. I just think it's a key reminder that we are all human. Right? And. And parents, especially, they. They are so hard on. And really, it's not about punishing. It's just about being the best we can and being open to learning and realizing we're not perfect. And there's. That's okay, you know, Good enough parent.
- [68:05]
B
Right?
- [68:07]
C
Cool.
- [68:08]
A
All right, well, thank you so much for coming on.
- [68:11]
B
Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Nice to see you.
- [68:14]
A
Thank you for listening to this week's podcast and thank you to our Patreons who helped make this episode possible. And if you would like to find out more about Patreon and the rewards and benefits, then there will be a link in the episode description. If you enjoy the OCD Stories podcast and would like to support us, please subscribe and rate the show wherever you listen to the podcast. And thank you to NOCD for supporting our work. If you want to find out more about nocd, you can click the link in the episode description. And quick disclaimer. Guys, this podcast is not therapy. It is not a replacement for therapy. Please seek treatment from a trained professional until we speak. Take care that.